e raised without hurting any one portion of the people
more than another.

If the links of a chain are not all equally strong, before any strain is
felt by the strong links the weak ones give way, and the chain is
broken. The case is the same with the members of a community. Now,
when you lay on taxes, the general tendency is to raise the price of
food and labour; most labourers receive the advantage of the price of
labour, but many pay unequally for the rise of food.

A tax on the wealthy, it will be said, is the thing proposed, but no, that
would do nothing, it must be a premium or drawback to men with
families who are poor, not merely to counteract the effect of any one
tax, but the total effect of taxation with respect to maintaining their
children. Wide, indeed, is the difference between a tax on those who
are well able to pay, and a premium or drawback in favour of those
who are not.

The manner of providing for the poor in England leads to a degree

---
{195} Probably, the reason that so small a sum serves the purpose in
Scotland is, that relief is administered to the families, at their own
houses, by the minister and elders of the parish. It is a rare instance of
an administration, without emoluments and without controul. The
funds are distributed with clean hands, in all cases, and impartially in
most.
-=-

[end of page #250]

of wastefulness and improvidence unknown in any other country.
Improvidence ought as much as possible to be discouraged; for, with
those who labour hard and are indigent, the desire to gratify some
pressing want, or present appetite, is continually uppermost. This may
be termed the war between the belly and the back, in which the former
is generally the conqueror. It would be a small evil if this victory were
decided seldom, as in other countries, but in the great towns of
England there is as it were a continual state of hostility. In London,
the battle is fought, on an average, at least, once a week; and idleness,
and the profits of those sort of petty usurers, called pawnbrokers, are
greatly promoted by it.

Some part of this evil cannot, perhaps, be remedied, but there are
certain articles that ought not to be taken in pledge, such as the clothes
of young children and working tools. {196}

There is no doubt but, that, in a populous inhospitable trading town,
where there is no means of obtaining aid, from friendship, where the
want is sometimes extreme, the resource of pledg